r paused.

'You must excuse me for a minute or two, neighbours,' replied Roller.
'You know we miners are often rather short of breath.' While he was
silent all sat waiting.

'That Turk did not die,' he went on at last, 'you can all see for
yourselves, for here he is, and in very good company too. The animal
happily came down just far enough for me to cut him loose from the
cord. By way of encouraging his tormentors to come down after him, I
threw my mining leather, my shoes, and even my miner's coat, on to the
fire, and they sent up such a pother of smoke that the Swedes gave it
up as a bad job, for that time at all events. I am only a poor miner,
but I never repented giving up my mining leather, my shoes, and my
coat, to save that dog's life.'

'Come to me, Conrad, my son,' said a gentle woman's voice. 'Give me
your hand, and let me feel sure that I have you still, and that you
have really and truly escaped from the dreadful Swedes.'

The apprentice drew near to the speaker, who occupied the place of
honour in the armchair, and the upper part of whose face was hidden by
a large green shade. As he gave his right hand to his blind mother, a
little girl, who sat on a stool at the woman's feet, gently took the
left hand that the Swedish bullet had wounded.

'Does it hurt, poor Conrad?' asked the child earnestly.

'No, little Dollie,' replied the youth. 'The scratch on my hand isn't
nearly so bad as the blisters the hard gulden have made on my feet.'

'Ah!' cried Dollie, with a shudder; 'but how it would have hurt you if
the Swedes had caught you!'

'Dollie is quite right,' said the mistress of the house. 'My late
husband used to say the Swedes came from the same place where the Turks
and the Tartars live, and that that was why they were so cruel.'

The elder journeyman, a young man who had been sitting by with his head
resting on his hand, apparently uninterested in what was passing, at
this point broke into the conversation rather suddenly. 'Have the
Imperialists been one bit less cruel than the Swedes? Have they not
tortured people too?'

'It is perfectly true,' said the miner. 'The Swedes and the
Imperialists are both tarred with the same brush. For plundering,
murdering, and burning, there is not a pin to choose between them.'

'And that,' said the elder journeyman, 'is just because this long, long
war has given us a new sort of men--men in whom desperate greediness
takes the place of a heart,